Yashcheritsiy, you start with the presupposition that Obama and Romney are effectively "moral equivalent." Then you collect and sift evidence WRT Romney, at least some of which is factually wrong (based on my experience with, e.g., firearms licensing in Massachusetts), or pre-spun for you by "sources" who may not be particularly objective — from which you draw the conclusion that there's not a dime's worth of difference between the two men, spiritually, intellectually, morally, ideologically.
Case in point: You present Romney as anti-RKBA. But the fact is, while he was Governor of Massachusetts, citizen firearms licensing expanded dramatically, particularly among women. And I guarantee you, Romney did NOT increase licensing fees 400%. I know this, because I pay such fees, and have been doing so since the Weld Administration.
I start with the presupposition that they are not morally (or ideologically) equivalent, because I believe that human character is formed by life experiences, and particularly those of one's childhood.
In short, you take a "bottom-up" approach in character assessment; while I prefer a "top-down" approach.
My main question for you here is: How can the characters of the two men be in any way "equivalent," when their childhood/family situations, life experiences, and educational histories could not be more different?
Obama was born to a rootless hippie (that would be Stanley Ann Dunham, child of atheist Marxist parents) with a romantic penchant for third-world men of color (e.g., Barack Obama, Sr., a black nationalist, anti-colonial Kenyan Marxist of Muslim faith) and Lolo Soetoro, an Indonesian Muslim of radical tendencies. Stanley certainly married the latter; I'm not sure she ever married the former. (Obama Sr. had four wives, permissible in Islam. It is still unclear to me that Obama Jr.'s mother was one of them.) It seems clear to me that Obama is not a "natural born citizen of the United States" owing to the British citizenship of his father. It is not certain that he was even born on U.S. soil; certain of his Kenyan relatives swear they were present at his birth in Kenya.
His mother dragged him to Indonesia when he was a young boy, where he was registered at school as being of Muslim faith. Then, when her marriage to Soetoro failed, she dragged him to Hawaii, and dumped him off with her parents, who raised him during his teenage years. Obama has little if any identification with America and American values. Indeed, in his youth he was attracted to radical Marxists (some would say communists) such as the black nationalist poet, Frank Marshall Davis. Information about Obama's college years has been effectively erased. But eventually he lands in Chicago where, as a student of Saul Alinsky, he became a "community organizer." My point is Obama is a rootless person, with no love or sympathy for America and the American way of life; he chose to adopt a "black" identity — and fell under the sway of the black nationalist preacher, Jeremiah Wright, whose anti-American diatribes Obama imbibed for some twenty years. He hung out with radical anarchists Bill Ayers (who probably is the unacknowledged ghost-writer of Obama's Dreams from My Father) and Bernardine Dohrn.
Romney was born into a loving, stable family. His father George, a successful self-made businessman, was chairman and president of American Motors Corporation and then, the 43rd Governor of Michigan — who according to people who knew him personally, saw political office, not as an opportunity for self-aggrandisement, but as an opportunity for public service. When George died, he left Mitt with a sizable inheritance — which Mitt then promptly donated to charity. He and Ann started out their married life quite "poor." But by dint of sheer smarts and hard work, he became a self-made man, like his father. In 1990, Romney joined Bain & Company, which was then facing financial collapse. He "saved" the firm, and became its CEO the following year. His business model at Bain was quite innovative at the time, but has since become "the model that everybody uses." Over the years, he has donated millions of dollars to a diversity of private charities.
I could add more details about Romney's personal history, all of which point to a man of open-handed generosity, sterling character, and personal integrity.
But since I'm trying to keep my comments brief, I'll just get to my point right here: How on earth do you justify your presupposition that these two men — Obama and Romney — are in any sense alike, characterwise? And on what basis do you suppose that they share the same ideology, or have the same political goals?
Just askin'.
Thank you very much for writing, Yashcheritsiy.
Social issues and cronyism.
Just last month Romney approved of gay couples adopting indigent children.
Romney also approved of TARP, a financial guy taking care of financial guys.